I first began by building my base.  My base is actually an octagon. It is 6' wide and 14" high. A good way to figure out the width is to divide whatever the height of the tree is in half.  My tree is 12' tall (without the star) so therefore the base is 6' wide.  I cut all the pieces to the right length first, then took 12 of them and cut them in half.  I'll explain why later. Next I only glued every eighth of a side.  So, if you have the 8 sided octagon, then only 1 side was glued.  Because of this, I only glued one 45 degree piece to each end of pipe.  I also took the piece that I cut in half and attached a "T" to them.  Remember that for the top octagon, the "T's" face down, and for the bottom octagon, the "T's" face up.

For the top have of the base, every one of the 8 sides was cut in half.  Four of the "T's" face into the center and 4 of them face downwards.  For the bottom section, the reminder of the "T's" face up.  Next I cut 12" pieces of pipe to connect the top and bottom sections.  There are only four pieces that connect the top and bottom.

Next it's time to make the small center octagon.  To do this, I used the same principals as the bigger ones.  The only difference here is that the "T's" face out towards the bigger octagon.  I glued this whole section together because the lights will be attached to this section with a lot of force pulling on them.

When it was time to raise the tree, I put a 2', 2" PVC pipe into the ground.  Next I slide the 1 1/2" PVC pipe into that piece.  The top is assembled by a bun foot with hooks all around the edges with a star attached to the top.  Now is also the time to attach the lights, and the four guy wires. It is much easier to attach this stuff, as well as test the lights one last time before you raise the tree.

Next I attached the remainder of the pole to the pole already in the ground.  For this part you are going to need another set of hands.  With the weight of the lights, the tree becomes very heavy, and until you secure the tree with guy wires, it's going to move and possibly fall over. After the tree is up, extend the 4 guy wires, and attach them to the anchors in the ground.  This is probably the most important step, so don't skimp on the guy wires!!  Once the pole is securely tied down I assembled the base around the center pole. I attached the base to the ground with garden staples, to ensure that it didn't move. Then it was time to break out the zip ties.  In my case, I had 1600 lights on the tree, which is 16 strands.  That number gets multiplied by 4, for the amount of tie downs per strand, so for this tree, I needed 64 zip ties, just t for the lights.  All the plug ends ended up in the center of the tree, which were then attached to four extension cords. 

2006 was my first year with a Mega Tree.  I also didn't have LOR but still wanted to put the lights into motion.  I opted for a chase controller, but a deluxe model.  I bought this controller from Action Lighting. It chases the lights in 4 different patterns, then flashes the lights.  You can also put it near music, and the lights will flash with the music. This controller actually worked really well and I was very happy with the result.  In 2007 however, I will had 4800 lights, and they were be controlled with LOR. I was sure to seal the controller in a box, because it is not made for the outdoors.

When all was said and done I was very happy with the outcome of the tree.  In 2007 I switched the PVC center pole to a steel pole.  We had some very high winds in 2006 and every time the wind blew I watched the tree basically bend in half.  Luckily I was one of the lucky ones that didn't have the tree fall over, which was good.  The steel pole was a much better choice in 2007.  It worked out great and I didn't watch the tree move at all.